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So 2017 was a pretty interesting year. On the non-gaming side for me it was fairly quiet though the year started (literally a few days into the year) with my father being diagnosed with cancer, and subsequently my father beating the shit out of said cancer and being cancer-free within a few months. Also I built a gaming PC on my own for the first time (before that I’d pay NCIX extra to build for me, never again). It’s super easy, everyone can and should do it… maybe I should do a quick post about that.

As far as gaming goes though… 2014, 2015, 2016 have all been pretty lame years for gaming. Game of the Year posts from me were difficult to write for the last few years because… Well, when there’s a year where there aren’t even 5 games good enough for the GotY award, you know it was a bad year. That said, 2017 said “fuck that here’s a ton of games” and I could’ve easily made a decent GotY post halfway through the year, with completely different games than what are on the list now, and it would still be a solid list. I did not have time to stop playing games this year, because there was always new stuff coming out. 2017 was a HUGE year for games, it was pure insanity.

So yeah… let’s go as per usual. A quick rant, then 5 almost-winners followed by the top GotY winner and finally a boatload of honorable mentions. Haven’t quite played enough trash this year for a “Trash of the Year” segment… So I won’t do that this time.

Rules: only games I played, and only games that came out this year (so no remasters or late ports, remakes are a grey area but I avoid them… example: the Crash trilogy wouldn’t be valid, but the Samus Returns remake would be). I may still put some as honorable mentions but they’re not valid for GotY candidacy.

Note: There’s several noteworthy 2017 games I haven’t played like Prey, Pyre, Evil Within 2, South Park, Hellblade, Battle Chasers: Nightwar, Divinity: Original Sin II, Torment: Tides of Numenera, Hand of Fate 2, For Honor, Dragon Quest Heroes II and a handful of others, so if you think they’re GotY and I don’t name them, know that I hold no ill will for these games.

Other note: I avoided games I knew would be shit like Shadows of War, Destiny 2, whatever Assassin’s Creed came out, Battlefront 2, Mass Effect Andromeda and several others… and know that I do hold ill will for these.

So Nintendo. They’re very much worth talking about recently. They’re really interesting. When the competition is happy with not doing much of anything, essentially stagnating, it’s nice to see Nintendo not only shaking things up, but also being properly successful again too.

There were a lot of questions related to the release of the Switch after the failure that was the Wii U (a console I really enjoyed and defended quite a bit despite its obvious shortcomings and Nintendo’s blatantly stupid decisions) and how the company was run during the Wii. After several months of the Switch being out and their overall direction being more obvious than at launch.

So I thought… hey let’s rant about Nintendo somewhat. I’ve talked a bit about the Switch a good amount this year, but this is a bit more than that.

So right now as I’m writing this intro we haven’t seen Nintendo’s Spotlight presentation, or the Treehouse stream. And what I’m currently saying is… Nintendo just has to show up and, whatever “winning E3” means, they’ll do it. It’s a pretty sad year when Ubisoft and MS had the best presentations so far.

Today: Nintendo’s showcase presentation, as well as a bit of the Treehouse stream since there’s apparently more announcements there.

Let’s go and talk about this! This is my second to last E3 post, next will be in a couple days with an overall impression of this E3 as a whole.

Shovel Knight is one of the few really strong examples of a successful video game Kickstarter. It was delayed nearly a year compared to the estimate date on the kickstarter page, but the wait was well worth it. Shovel Knight was a fantastic game in basically every aspect.

I don’t think I reviewed the first DLC, Plague of Shadows. But it was quite fun and felt like a completely different game than Shovel Knight despite taking place in largely similar levels and environments and using pretty much all the same components.

Specter of Torment is the latest DLC, and I thought I’d give my quick impressions about it.

March was quite the month for me. My dad got cancer surgery (he’s doing good), work being weird, Switch, a bunch of posts, too much Power Rangers, Switch, Nier, probably other games… It feels like this month lasted a year. But we’re right at the end and it’s time to talk about next month!

The count in April: 17 multiplats, a Switch release, 2 PS4 releases and a PC release. There’s a good number of interesting releases this month. I’m grabbing quite a few things.

So let’s talk about it!

Usual disclaimer: This includes either games I’m interested in, games that may be/become popular and random stuff in-between… Basically anything I feel bears mentioning. Probably missing stuff because game companies are shit about announcing release dates nowadays (and good at delaying games near release). Indies in particular are kinda random, or bad at making their games known (I get that it’s hard, but if I don’t see anything about your game before it comes out, I can’t very much highlight it). So if there’s no indie games here, it’s pretty normal. I won’t spend hours that I could be playing games watching videos for indie games I have no immediate interest in.

There it is, potentially the biggest game of the year. In a year of a surprisingly decent amount of really cool games games coming out, Zelda still ends up being at the top of the list for GotY contenders (and that was even before anyone had played it).

So as I was playing this game, and even after being done, I was wondering… how are you supposed to review this game? I feel any reviewer that talked in-depth about gameplay is doing it wrong, because the gameplay itself is something that is… spoilable. Basically, Breath of the Wild is a game that should be played “blind”. The less you know about it, the better the experience (at least in the first couple hours).

So what I’m attempting here, rather than an actual review, is a sort of… discussion of my thoughts on the game. I’ll include a big spoiler warning in before elements that I consider spoilers.

Right, so a few cool things came out in February, but not much. I’m lining some things up for reviews/impressions. Not sure when I can get some of them out.

So March has one platform coming out with 12 launch titles and another later in the month. Otherwise I’m highlighting 4 PS4 releases, 1 that may be a PS4 release or a multiplat release, 12 multiplats, a PC release and a 3DS release.

Yeah, just a few days left, March is gonna be huge.

Usual disclaimer: This includes either games I’m interested in, games that may be/become popular and random stuff in-between… Basically anything I feel bears mentioning. Probably missing stuff because game companies are shit about announcing release dates nowadays (and good at delaying games near release). Indies in particular are kinda random, or bad at making their games known (I get that it’s hard, but if I don’t see anything about your game before it comes out, I can’t very much highlight it). So if there’s no indie games here, it’s pretty normal. I won’t spend hours that I could be playing games watching videos for indie games I have no immediate interest in.

Alright, January was kinda quiet (still a couple releases upcoming and some that I’m playing in preparation for review), but soon we’re getting lots of stuff coming out. Hopefully I can cover a lot of stuff, we’ll see. I’ve been wanting to make this blog a bit more lively and I think I’ve been doing a bit better with it of late.

So February… 3 PS4 releases (2 exclusive), 9-ish multiplats, a mobile release, a PC release and a 3DS release. Surprising amount of stuff for the PS4 once again, that’s nice and very unlike the PS4.

So let’s go and see what’s up!

Usual disclaimer: This includes either games I’m interested in, games that may be/become popular and random stuff in-between… Basically anything I feel bears mentioning. Probably missing stuff because game companies are shit about announcing release dates nowadays (and good at delaying games near release). Indies in particular are kinda random, or bad at making their games known (I get that it’s hard, but if I don’t see anything about your game before it comes out, I can’t very much highlight it). So if there’s no indie games here, it’s pretty normal. I won’t spend hours that I could be playing games watching videos for indie games I have no interest in.

Alright, so I want to make this my final post about the Switch, at least until it comes out. I don’t tend to give this much attention on here to new hardware, but the Switch is… different.

After the presentation on January 12, I was left… confused. It was really a weird presentation overall, it was disappointing but also had some really exciting aspects. I didn’t know what to feel about it, so I decided, after posting my “live” reaction, that I’d sleep on it for a few days and figure out what I actually think about the Switch.

So… let’s gather my thoughts, and let’s rant about this.

I will try to get the most stuff I can think of out of the way so I can not post about the Switch again until release. So this might be a bit long. But this isn’t a pointless post. I try to not repeat too much of the stuff I’ve said before, though I might.